Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson look ahead with a city backdrop.Image via BBC
By
Shawn Van Horn
Published 19 minutes ago
Shawn Van Horn is a Senior Author for Collider. He's watched way too many slasher movies over the decades, which makes him an aficionado on all things Halloween and Friday the 13th. Don't ask him to choose between Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees because he can't do it. He grew up in the 90s, when Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, and TGIF were his life, and still watches them religiously to this day. Larry David is his spirit animal. His love for entertainment spreads to the written word as well. He has written two novels and is neck deep in the querying trenches. He is also a short story maker upper and poet with a dozen publishing credits to his name. He lives in small town Ohio, where he likes to watch professional wrestling and movies.
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Everyone loves a good mystery, with a brilliant detective trying to put together the pieces that will help them catch the bad guy. Not only is it thrilling for the audience, but it also allows us to be part of the action as we try to solve the mystery along with the hero. The most famous detective of all is Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, and from books to movies to TV, the character has influenced so many similar crime solvers. If you grew up in the 1980s, you were probably watching television mysteries like Magnum P.I., Simon & Simon, or Matlock, but the best of the bunch was actually led by an elderly woman not to be messed with. Murder, She Wrote, starring Angela Lansbury, ran for 12 seasons on CBS, and now every episode is available for free on Tubi.
What Is 'Murder, She Wrote' About?
Murder, She Wrote wasn't about some gun-toting cop or a trained professional detective. Instead, its protagonist was not only an older woman, but someone with no real training at catching killers... at least not in a conventional way. Its lead character, Jessica Fletcher, was instead, a widow and retired English teacher who had gone on to become a famous writer of mystery novels. Rather than living in some big city like New York or Los Angeles, Fletcher lives in the small, picturesque town of Cabot Cove, Maine. There, she's just Jessica, with the same friends she's had for years, but that doesn't mean all is well in her beautiful little world, because Cabot Cove is seemingly filled with murderers!
Murder, She Wrote was a murder of the week type series and not one that spends an entire season trying to solve one crime. So, every week, over 264 episodes, and four TV movies, some poor soul would be killed, and it would be up to Jessica Fletcher to be the one intuitive enough to figure out who the killer was and out them. Although you have to suspend disbelief that there could be so many evil people in one town, Jessica Fletcher, because of her popularity, isn't always in Cabot Cove, as she's often traveling, only to stumble into another town's murder mystery, just like what happens with Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) on Poker Face.
Angela Lansbury Wasn't the First Choice to Play Jessica Fletcher
In a 1988 article he wrote for The Christian Science Monitor, Executive Producer Peter S. Fischer explained how Murder, She Wrote came to be. In 1983, impressed by what Fischer, Dick Levinson, and Bill Link had accomplished on the short-lived NBC mystery series Ellery Queen, CBS decided that they wanted the three to make a new mystery series for the network. That might not seem like a big deal, but at the time, TV whodunits hadn't had much success, so a big risk was being taken. The trio had already tried to sell a mystery series about a murder-solving retired magician, but when that fell through with NBC, they took it to CBS.
CBS was brave. They actually wanted an older woman as the protagonist, which made Fischer and company nervous. He wrote, "An older female protagonist in a nonaction, nonviolent, talky mystery that would require its audience to actually pay attention to what was going on? Only the seriously deranged would embark on such a perilous course." Still, they were up for the challenge, and decided to take inspiration from Agatha Christie, as well as the guest star approach that many popular shows of the day, like The Love Boat, used. But just who would play Jessica Fletcher? It was the most important decision of all, because if audiences didn't buy into the unique premise through the character, there wouldn't be much writing of Murder, She Wrote.
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Posts By Zach Laws Feb 9, 2025Wanting a known name with a lot of charm, warmth, and talent, so they first turned to Jean Stapleton, who had become very popular for playing Edith Bunker on All in the Family. Although they met with her, and she was initially interested, Stapleton eventually decided against the part. Then an even more impressive name came in, as Angela Lansbury, who at the time was a major Broadway star with four Tony wins, put it out that she was interested in doing a TV show. Fischer wrote, "After a short meeting in which Levinson, Link, and I fell madly in love with our new star, CBS committed several million dollars and within a matter of weeks, we were on a sound stage shooting the first scene."
'Murder, She Wrote' Succeeded Because of Its Unconventional Hero
Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote's "Nan's Ghost" episodeImage via CBS
There were several characters that made up the world of Murder, She Wrote. As pivotal as Jessica Fletcher was, she needed other people in her small hometown to interact with, whether she was helping solve a crime or annoying them because she was in their way. Tom Bosley of Happy Days played Sheriff Amos Tupper in the first four seasons, before handing his badge over to Sheriff Mort Mertzger (Ron Masak). He's in Murder, She Wrote more than any other character besides Jessica, and has an excellent backstory of being a former New York City cop who takes the Sheriff job because he thinks it'll be quieter in Cabot Cove, only to find himself in the bizarro murder capital of the world. Murder, She Wrote had deputies, doctors, and even a pre-Law & Order Jerry Orbach as a recurring private investigator, but despite the gathered talent and notable weekly guest stars, this was Angela Lansbury's show.
Lansbury wasn't even 60 yet when Murder, She Wrote began, but it helped that she looked much older, like someone's grandma out there solving mysteries. If you watched Beauty and the Beast over and over as a kid, you know how talented Lansbury is, but Jessica Fletcher is a much quieter role. There was no singing or dancing here, but a subdued performance where facial expressions and line delivery are more important. Jessica Fletcher could have been written to be an over-the-top, above-it-all, strange woman, but audiences loved her because she's so down-to-earth. Straight away, we cared for her because her husband had passed away, and we trusted her because she was a teacher. Jessica is a kind, normal person who loves her friends and enjoys writing her books, but she just so happens to be blessed (or cursed) with such great intuition that only she can catch the weekly killer. Jessica is never played as acting like she's better than anyone. She's simply an older woman with a gift who cares, and who doesn't win by carrying a gun or being an ass kicking lady, but by using her smarts to locate the killer, before letting the Sheriff do the rest.
CBS often gets ridiculed for being that network that old people watch, and shows like Murder, She Wrote certainly didn't help the cause at a time when more action-heavy shows like Magnum P.I. (the two series even had a crossover!), Miami Vice, and MacGyver were all the rage, but it still might be the best of the bunch. Murder, She Wrote was like opening a cozy book on Sunday night. It didn't need gunfights, violence, and chases. It found success through slow-burning intrigue and good old-fashioned detective work, and it did it all with one of television's best actresses in Angela Lansbury. Even though she got teased for being old, Lansbury had the last laugh, as she lived for another three decades after the series ended. She may have sadly passed away in 2022 at the age of 96, but in Murder, She Wrote, and now on Tubi, she lives on forever.
Murder, She Wrote
Like Follow Followed TV-14 Mystery Crime Drama Release Date 1984 - 1996-00-00 Network CBS Directors Anthony Pullen Shaw, Walter Grauman, Vincent McEveety, Seymour Robbie, Jerry Jameson, John Llewellyn Moxey, Peter Crane, Arthur Allan Seidelman, Allen Reisner, Chuck Bowman, Corey Allen, Don Mischer, Kevin Corcoran, Alan Cooke, Alexander Singer, Charles S. Dubin, David Hemmings, Edward M. Abroms, Hy Averback, John Astin, Michael A. Hoey, Paul Lazarus, Paul Lynch, Philip Leacock Writers Robert Swanson, Tom Sawyer, Donald Ross, Laurence Heath, J. Michael Straczynski, Michael Scheff, Mary Ann Kasica, Robert Van Scoyk, J. Miyoko Hensley, Steven Hensley, Dick Nelson, Bruce Lansbury, Craig W. Van Sickle, David Moessinger, Robert Hamner, Wendy Graf, Carleton Eastlake, J. Larry Carroll, Jackson Gillis, Jerry Ross, John D. F. Black, Larry DiTillio, Lisa Seidman, Oliver HaileyCast
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Angela Lansbury
Jessica Fletcher
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Amos Tupper
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